Friday, December 14, 2012

What are the Legal Rights of a Compilation Curator? The Debate Over Yellow Pills: Prefill

The front (right) and back covers of the original Yellow Pills: Prefill compilation.

This week's RFT Music feature story is about St. Louis power-pop connoisseur Jordan Oakes and Chicago label Numero. Mike Appelstein unpacks their disagreement over a compilation album Oakes curated and Numero released in 2003.

At issue is a recent re-release by Numero of essentially the same tracklisting but with a different name and no sign of Oakes' contributions anywhere. Oakes took to the reviews section of Amazon.com to state his case; Numero responded with a markedly different take.

Appelstein sorts through the allegations in the feature -- it's more than worth a read. Meanwhile, to give you some sense of the music being cataloged, here are a few of the semi-obscure pop gems that appear on the compilation. Please note that this is only intended for sampling -- if you would like to hear the full compilation, please buy it.